Justin Long, the floppy-fringed star of the Mac v. PC ads, revealed that he heard it from a good source (er, a PC, actually) that the sweet-natured, yet passive-combative ad campaign run by Apple is coming to an end. In an interview with The A.V. Club, he remarked, "I think they might be done. In fact, I heard it from John [Hodgman,] I think they're going to move on. I can't say definitively, which is sad."

The campaign was all about Apple vs. Microsoft and, given yesterday's share prices, which put the Cupertino company's value at less than $40 million behind its Redmond rival, Apple may rightly feel that it's time to put Long and Hodgman in the "Job Done" drawer. About bloody time too.

Does Apple even need to advertise its products? iPod sales rose by 10% in February. And the ad network Chitikaclaims over 600,000 iPads are out surfing the Web, although the science behind it is a bit wobbly. It's also done a handy little guide to iPad concentration throughout the US—earliest adopters are, unsurprisingly, in California.

And finally, the Patent and Trademark Office just published 16 new patents granted to Apple, but these are old designs, some submitted as long ago as 2005. The most intriguing, however, is a virtual QWERTY keyboard filed back in 2006, and TUAW is speculating that it could have been an idea for the iPhone.

My writing career has taken me all round the houses over the past decade and a half--from grumpy teens and hungover rock bands in the UK, where I was born, via celebrity interviews, health, tech and f…